GREAT CLOUDS OF FLIES hung over the pail and buzzed round my head. I had to keep my mouth shut tight in case I swallowed one. They crawled over my face, arms, and legs, making me itch until I nearly screamed. Most of the dog dung was inside the village, but the lads always tried to beat me to the best bits. Sometimes they grabbed my pail and emptied it into their own. It was no good telling Mam. “Learn to stand up for yourself” was all she’d say. So I’d walked by myself as far away from the village as I dared, along the road that led to the house of women.
Mam said I wasn’t to go near it, but I couldn’t go the other way out of the village along the forest road. Mam said I was never to go there either, not without William to mind me, in case I got lost. I shuddered at the thought. Old Lettice said there once was a terrible monster that hunted in the forest. I knew it was still in there, cause sometimes when I was in bed at night, I could hear it shrieking.
“Would you run an errand for me, child?”
I spun round, almost knocking over the pail. One of the grey ladies was standing behind me with a basket in her arms. She was fatter than old Lettice. She smelt of honey, roasted pork fat, and spices, like you could eat her.
“Some of the beguines and all of the children are up there haymaking.” She pointed up to one of the meadows on the side of the hill. “They’ve onions, bread, and cheese with them, but I’m sure it won’t be enough. The children will be starving after all that work. So I’ve made a batch of fresh griddle cakes. Would you be a blessed sweeting and take them up to the meadow? If I went climbing there in this heat, I’d melt like a lump of lard in fire.” She chuckled and under her heavy grey skirts her belly wobbled up and down. Her face was dripping with sweat as if she’d already started to melt.
I wriggled my toes in the dust. “Have to fill the pail. Mam’ll be as mad as a wasp if I don’t.”
“How much do you get paid for a pail?”
“Penny.” I was afraid to look at her face. Old Lettice says you must never look a witch in the eye else she’ll hex you.
She dug around in a small leather scrip fastened to her waist and held out a coin. “Here’s your penny. And if you make yourself useful and help with the hay when you get there, you’ll earn another. Now off you go and don’t eat all the cakes before you get there.”
I looked up, before I remembered not to, but she was still smiling; even her eyes were crinkled up in their own grin. “I can eat a cake?” My stomach was growling.
She opened the basket and thrust one into my hand. It was still warm and oozing with honey. I licked the honey off my fingers so as not to waste one drop, then took a huge bite.
Mam said to stay away from the house of women, but I hadn’t gone inside, had I? I glanced up and down the empty road. If I didn’t tell, no one’d ever find out.
beatrice
cOME ON, LASS, shift your arse,” Pega bellowed.
Osmanna was gazing down the hill in the direction of the forest. She didn’t seem to realise Pega was talking to her. “I swear I’ll swing for her,” Pega muttered. “It’ll take two trips to get this hay down to the barn and if she doesn’t get a move on we’ll still be here at midnight.”
“Have patience with the child,” I pleaded. “She’s not used to working the fields.”
“Aye, well, she’d best get used to it quick. Ulewic folk have carried D’Acasters on their backs for generations. About time one of them D’Acasters learned that bread’s made from sweat and blisters.”
It was all very well for Pega; she could toss dead sheep onto a hurdle single-handed, but some of us had not been brought up to work the fields.
The heat was making us all irritable. The air was thick and sultry. Below us the fields were shimmering in the heat haze, so that they looked like some great lake of rippling water. Even up on the hill, not a leaf stirred on the shaggy trees, as though they were too sleepy to move. It was not yet midday, but already my clothes were sticking to my back and my arms were aching.
I shouldn’t have been working in the fields at all; none of the Marthas were, because they had their own duties. I should have been a Martha myself by now, but Servant Martha had taken against me from the first. She was the one stopping me; I knew that, no matter what the others said. I’ll tell you this: Servant Martha might think she ruled the beguinage, but she didn’t. We all had a say and I wouldn’t be kept down by her. I’d had a lifetime of women like her ordering me about.
A peal of giggles rang out across the meadow. At least the children were happy, bless them. They loved gathering up the bundles of sweet warm hay, though more got scattered than collected as they tossed it over one another. It wasn’t work for them, for they were delighted by any opportunity to abandon their lessons. Only little Margery hung back shyly. She stood behind us sucking her thumb and staring down the hill towards the river, glinting in the pale sun.
“Where does the river come from, Pega?” she asked.
“River comes from a stream and the stream comes from a drindle and the drindle comes from Anu’s pool miles away in the great hills. That’s where they all begin.”
“What’s Anu’s pool?” Margery asked.
“It’s where Black Anu lives. She gives birth to the river. It runs out from between her legs. Haven’t you heard tell of Black Anu?”
Margery shook her head, smiling expectantly.
“She’s one of the fay folk-half of her is a woman, but she has the legs of a goat, except no one ever sees those for she hides them under her robes. She sleeps deep in the black pool while it’s day, but at witch-light she rises in robes green as pond weed, glowing in the dark with her silver hair trailing behind her. She’s so beautiful any man who glimpses her can’t take his eyes off her. But that’s just her witchery, for inside she’s really a withered old crone with a heart as black as a marsh pool. If any man should dare to tread near her lair, Anu lures him to dance with her till he’s all tangled up in her hair, then she drags him down into the pool and drowns him. And then…” Pega stretched out her long arms, grabbed Margery and hissed into her ear, “she sinks her teeth into him and drinks his blood.” She nipped Margery on the neck and the child ran off screaming in horrified delight.
“Osmanna,” Pega yelled again. “Bring that hay sledge here-now!”
The poor girl started violently and turned towards us, her hands clenched as if she was about to leap into a fistfight. Osmanna always looked wary and guarded. Even when you spoke to her, her gaze was somewhere else, as if she constantly feared an ambush.
Pega shook her head in disgust as Catherine, always eager to help, ran over to help Osmanna drag the sledge higher up the slope. There was no getting a haywain up to these small meadows on the hillside; you had to use sledges.
I was glad that Catherine had at last found a friend. When Osmanna first arrived, Catherine dragged her round the beguinage introducing her to everyone as if she were presenting her at court. Catherine was so eager to show her every inch of the beguinage. But Osmanna’s face wore a perpetually frozen expression as if she was afraid to take pleasure in anything. Poor Catherine did her best. She even tried the story of the well on Osmanna.
“It sprang miraculously from the ground; Servant Martha prayed and then said ‘dig here’ and the men did, though they didn’t believe her, and at once the water came gushing out. The men were so awestruck they fell on their knees in front of her.”
That wasn’t quite how I remembered it. Servant Martha was certainly no saint and I couldn’t imagine anyone in the village kneeling to any of us, not even if the well had flowed with wine instead of water, but I didn’t interrupt Catherine’s tale.